500 Sq. Ft. House 3D Printed in Less Than a Day

Engineering reports on a Long Island, N.Y.-based startup, S-Squared 3D Printers (SQ3D), which has completed construction on a 3D printed 500 square foot home in Patchogue, N.Y. Apparently, the entire process only took 12 hours. Innovations such as this would help “drop the cost and danger of construction significantly.”

SQ3D was founded in 2014 “as a manufacturer of desktop filament extrusion 3D printers…while the company still ships about one printer a month, they began investigating the idea of additive construction about two to three years ago.”

Speaking on the company’s construction-scale 3D printers, SQ3D’s Chief Engineer Kirk Andersen elaborates: “The entire machine is made out of aluminum and stainless-steel construction. We’re using very accurate parts, linear rails. We’ve developed our own gear ratios to hold up the large gantry.”

“The result is the Autonomous Robotic Construction System (ARCS), for which SQ3D has filed a patent. Due to the proprietary nature of some of the firm’s technology, Andersen wasn’t able to go into all of the specifics with regard to the extruder and cement mixture, except to say a large volumetric mixer was required for the sheer amount and reactivity of the mixture, which cannot be made manually. The cement pump, too, has been modified.”

In the future, “SQ3D will be exploring various reinforcement techniques, such as introducing reinforcement fibers to the concrete itself. Additionally, the firm may also look into geopolymers which could be used in place of concrete, which, if it were a country, would be the third largest emitter of carbon dioxide behind the U.S. and China.”